literally. Mr Melmoth has thus happily expreffed the sense of the whole paffage: "If you have any fpirit then, fly "hither, and learn from our elegant "bills of fare how to refine your own; though, to do your talents justice, "this is a fort of knowledge in which you are much fuperior to your inftructors."-Pliny, in one of his epiftles to Calvifius, thus addresses him, Assem para, et accipe auream fabulam : fabulas immo: nam me priorum nova admonuit, lib. 2. ep. 20. To this expreffion, affem para, &c. which is a proverbial mode of speech, we have nothing that correfponds in English. To translate the phrase literally would have a poor effect: "Give me a penny, and take a golden story, or a story worth gold." Mr Melmoth has given the fenfe in eafy language: "Are' « Are you inclined to hear a story? or, "if you please, two or three? for one BUT this refource, of tranflating the idiomatic phrase into easy language, must fail, where the merit of the paffage to be tranflated actually lies in that expreffion which is idiomatical. This will often occur in epigrams, many of which are therefore incapable of translation : Thus, in the following epigram, the point of wit lies in an idiomatic phrase, and is loft in every other language where the fame precife idiom does not occur: On the wretched imitations of the Diable Boiteux of Le Sage: Le Diable Boiteux eft aimable; Le Sage y triomphe aujourdhui; N'a pas valu le Diable. We We fay in English, "'Tis not worth a "fig," or, " 'tis not worth a farthing ;" but we cannot fay, as the French do, " 'Tis not worth the devil;" and therefore the epigram cannot be tranflated in to English. SOMEWHAT of the fame nature are the following lines of Marot, in his Epitre au Roi, where the merit lies in the ludicrous naiveté of the laft line, which is idiomatical, and has no ftrictly correfponding expreffion in English ; J'avois un jour un valet de Gascogne, ALTHOUGH We have idioms in Eng lifh that are nearly fimilar to this, we have have none which has the fame naiveté, and therefore no juftice can be done to this paffage by any English translation. [IN like manner, it appears to me impoffible to convey, in any translation, the naiveté of the following remark on the fanciful labours of Etymologists: "Monfieur,—dans l'Etymologie il faut હૈદ compter les voyelles pour rien, et les "confonnes pour peu de chose.” J omitted in the third Edition 1813 CHAP CHAPTER XII. Difficulty of tranflating Don Quixote, from its Idiomatic Phrafeology.-Of the best Tranflations of that Romance.-Comparifon of the Tranflation by Motteux with that by Smollet. 'HERE is perhaps no book to which THE it is more difficult to do perfect juftice in a translation than the Don Quixote of Cervantes. This difficulty arifes from the extreme frequency of its idiomatic phrafes. As the Spanish language is in itself highly idiomatical, even the narraL1 tive |